Everywhere we look, people are concerned with essentially one thing: getting what they want, when they want it, and as fast as possible. The fires that fuel their appetite for this envisioned success create so much smoke that they lose sight of the fact that all they reap for their insistent sowing are the cold ashes of regret raked out of broken relationships.

If we are ever to realize the integrity and consistent kindness of our True Nature, if we long to know something of heaven while we live on earth, then we must sow the seeds that bring that higher life into fruition. One cannot expect to reap what one does not sow; and merely hoping for a higher life is not sowing true spiritual seeds, any more than climbing an imagined mountain is the same as reaching its top.

To sow spiritual seeds means that we do spiritual work. Spiritual work is always interior work first, even if, as a matter of course, this work becomes manifest through exterior action. What is this interior work by which we sow the seeds of the celestial within us? Following are four ways to sow the seeds of a higher and happier life.

1. We must work to not burden others or ourselves with past regrets, disappointments, or fearful future visions, even as we learn to ask truth for more insight into those unseen aspects of our present nature that are reaping their regrets even as they sow more of the same dark seeds.

2. We must learn to sit quietly with ourselves and wait patiently for the light of God's peace to replace those dark, noisy thoughts and feelings telling us that we have too much old baggage to make the journey home. Each time we sow these seeds through some quiet meditation, we reap the strength that comes from realizing that this silence that comes to us is our true home.

3. We must deliberately remember our intention to start our whole life over every moment we awaken to find ourselves reliving some past conflict. To cultivate this refreshed outlook, born of remembering that our true life is always new in the Now, is to let go of who we have been and to begin reaping a life free of anger and fear.

4. We must learn to look our fears, weariness, and anxiety directly in the eye, and instead of seeing what is impossible according to their view of life, sow the seeds of a new self by daring to doubt their dark view of things. Our refusal to identify with self-limiting negative states reaps us the reward of rising above their inherent limitations.

It is not enough to just sow seeds in this physical life, i.e., struggle for or make millions, invent the greatest gizmo ever, become the who's who of some social registry, for regardless of how sublime these intentions first seem, and even if their seeds should grow and flourish, they can only grow into forms that pass and fall in time. If we wish a life that is whole and loving, one that is filled with new light, then we must sow these eternal seeds within ourselves; that is our work. Make your own list of ways to work at sowing the seeds of the higher life. Set your self to the task of being an inwardly awake person and watch how you begin to reap the awareness that makes all things possible.